Is
it ok if I vent a little today? I’ve built up a little frustration
over the past couple of months and I just need a pressure release. Will
you let me do it?

As you
may be aware I have started a varsity football program at a local Christian
High School. Although I vowed to myself that I would never return to prowling
the sidelines when I walked away from public education in 2000, the opportunity
to train young males to be men was something I could not, in good conscience,
run from.

Not
all males are men. I hope you understand that. Especially convincing is
the evidence I have garnered recently that Christian males in particular
are the least manly.

It is
cultural, I guess. Someone, somewhere, determined that trading the old
man for the new man meant losing your backbone. Heck, you can’t
even pass gas at a “men’s fellowship” without being
looked at as if you had just pee-peed on the Decalogue. Pastors are the
worst. Any whiff of “Christian testosterone” sends them to
their Joyce Meyer collection of sermons in an attempt to “soften”
your rough edges.

Well,
not for me. My new birth made me more manly, more courageous, and more
willing to live life on the edge. I like guys with rough edges. In fact,
I’d rather hang out with some of my “lost” buddies than
some of the sissified males I meet in Christian circles. I even said “damn
it” once when I was golfing. And that was after I was saved. It’s
like one acquaintance opined after playing a round of golf with me. He
knew my “reputation” but had never had the opportunity to
spend any time with me.

“I
gotta tell you Coach, I really enjoyed playing with you. I hope you don’t
take this wrong, but you are not like most Christian guys I know. You’re
more…normal…I guess is the word. So many guys I know who go
to church seem phony…too sweet for me, if you know what I mean.
I could see myself hangin’ out with you more often.”

“Come
on, Tim,” I barked back. “I’m just like Jesus. Jesus
was studly. I got something to die for now. How many guys do you know
who can say that?”

His
look of bewilderment spoke volumes. “So Dude…Coach…where
do you go to church?”

Back
to my venting. Our football team is driving me nuts. They are great young
men, obedient and mannerly, the kind of kid you could trust with your
daughter. But as my own high school football coach often said they need
a little “piss and vinegar.” They take the “turn the
other cheek” attitude with them onto the field. Our Christian-culture
has taught them that being “gracious in defeat” is Christ-like.
I tell them being “gracious in victory” is more fun.

Maybe
it is just me. I want them to be MEN. Our Christian-culture teaches them
to be doormats. In Sunday school they are taught to be kind. I want them
to be valiant!

Needless
to say, I am swimming upstream on this one. All day long they are taught
in school to “act like Christians.” That is the problem, I
tell them. Stop ACTING like a Christian and start BEING one.

But
we don’t even know what that means. WWJL…What Was Jesus Like?
I promise you this. He was all MAN. He confronted evil, challenged the
status quo, upset some apple-carts, and spoke what was on His mind. He
was the original “Braveheart.”

Come
on now. Look around at the Christian role models our young men have to
look up to. Most don’t even look like men. What is the word that
pop culture has given us…metrosexuals…? Modern Christian men
are the ultimate metrosexuals.

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What
is a metrosexual? According to the Urban
Dictionary it is a guy who uses mousse on his hair, cream on his skin,
wears jewelry, and designer clothes? (Hey Honey…where are my
boots and bibs?) Look at the Pastor your son sees every Sunday. Does
he ooze testosterone or progesterone? Is he someone who appears to be
steadfast and unmovable or someone who is more compromising and nice?

It matters,
you know. What a young man thinks a Christian man looks like, matters.
I was raising-Cain with our players last week and I told them “You
guys make me want to cuss! The Bible says to be angry and sin not. I want
you to know that I am angry enough to cuss…but I’m not going
to. You guys would do well to get a little ticked off yourselves.”

But,
I suppose Christian men aren’t permitted to get mad anymore. It’s
not very Christ-like.

(I’m
gonna keep riding this stallion a bit farther.) Look at the “Christian-school
your child attends. How many women are doing the teaching? How many women
know how it feels to be a man…especially a young one? Who do the
young men answer to? You got it…women. Who teaches them about Christianity?
Bingo…women. Just where is it our young guys go to learn how to
be a man?

Can
I use myself as an example? I have always been the aggressive type. Arriving
fourth out of five children, being small (5’7”) in stature
(I was called Baby Dave by my cousins until I was 10), and a natural whipping
boy for my older brothers and their friends, I learned early to stand
up and fight back. It was that “spunky” attitude that enabled
me to be a three sport star in high school, earn varsity letters in football,
basketball, and baseball at Otterbein College, and lead the fraternity
in weekend drinking binges. “Daubie” was the life of the party…the
original “wild and crazy guy.”

In 1987,
at the age of 35, I met Jesus. Raised in church as a child, forced by
my mother to watch Billy Graham crusades on television, I was religious
enough to know right from wrong. Nothing more than a religious pagan,
I ran to the altar with fear and trembling when the Gospel was clearly,
and uncompromisingly, articulated to me. From that day forward my life
has never been the same. Jesus did for me what a phone booth did for Clark
Kent; changed me into a brand new man.

Overnight,
I had gone from serving the King of Beers to serving the King of Kings
and for the next 10 years “men of God” tried to turn me into
a sissy… to domesticate me…to conform me to their image of
what a “Christian man” should be. Until the ACLU came knocking
at my door.

I thank
God for the ACLU…they dynamited my sissy hind-end out of the pew.
I’ve been on a devil-hunt ever since.

I grew
up on John Wayne and Combat, Have-Gun Will-Travel and
Paladin. Who can ever forget Matt Dillon and Gunsmoke, Hoss Cartwright
and Bonanza, Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry, and Clayton Moore
and Jay Silverheels in The Lone Ranger?

Has
there ever been a greater line than the one uttered by Paul Newman in
Cool Hand Luke, “Calling it your job don’t
make it right.”

When
I was a young boy the good guys were men, they loved women, and they defended
the weak. Today, our leaders “come to consensus,” “reach
across the aisle,” and are “open-minded.” Well, not
me. I’m closed minded and proud of it. I know what I believe and
not afraid to defend it. The prissy-pastors don’t know what to do
with me.

I wonder,
was Jesus open-minded? Did He preach a message of “consensus building?”
Did He use mousse, face cream, and wear designer jeans?”

I was
reading this week (Matt
16) where folks had trouble differentiating between Jesus and John
the Baptist…they were cousins, you know. The establishment wanted
nothing to do with The Baptist…he wasn’t polished enough….locusts,
camel hair, wild honey…wasn’t in vogue, if you know what I
mean.

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Jesus
flipped over tables, John’s mouth cost him his head. Their paths
took them down the same road.

Jesus
wasn’t relevant to the world; He overcame it. “Among
them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John
the Baptist.”

Keep
your mousse and jewelry and pass me the locusts and the wild-honey.

Coach Dave Daubenmire, founder
and President of Pass The Salt Ministries www.ptsalt.com
and Minutemen United www.minutemenunited.org,
is host of the high octane Pass The Salt radio show heard in Columbus,
Ohio.

In 1999 Coach Daubenmire was sued by the ACLU
for praying with his teams while coaching high school in Ohio. He now
spends his energy fighting for Christian principles in the public domain.